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What’s five years experience worth in social care?
I can tell you…
Twelve pence an hour.
That’s the average pay difference between a care worker with five or more years experience and one with less than a year…
… we know this courtesy the King’s Fund and a very interesting analysis by Danielle Jefferies.
Think about what you learn in five years.
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How to reassure someone with dementia who doesn’t recognise you.
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How to help someone get dressed without taking over.
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How to spot that someone is a little less steady on their feet than they were yesterday.
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How to recognise the bed hasn't been slept in, evidence of making a cuppa, the person is wearing the same clothes as yesterday, the loo-roll has run out...
... the tells, that tell the experienced eye, something's wrong.
In a nutshell England had 96,000 vacant adult social care posts in 2025/26. In home-care, nearly one in eleven posts was vacant.
The overall vacancy rate has fallen from its 2022 peak, but overseas recruitment has pretty-well collapsed...
... the number of people starting direct care jobs in the year they arrived in the UK fell from 105,000 to 30,000 in two years...
... more than one in four care workers and nearly one in three nurses leave care jobs within a year.
Skills for Care predicts another 410,000 roles will be needed by 2040 if staffing grows in line with the +65yrs population.
What does a vacancy look like to someone who needs care?
Another night in hospital because nobody can arrange a care package?
A daughter asking her employer for fewer hours because her dad needs help getting up in the morning?
What about the visits that do go ahead?
A familiar care worker knows how yer granny usually gets out of a chair. They'll notice the day they can’t.
A study of long-term home care in New York linked more consistent staffing with fewer falls, fewer symptoms of depression and a better chance of holding on to the ability to manage everyday tasks.
When we ask whether the visit happened, we should also ask; who came through the door.
On paper, every visit covered, but ... for the person opening the door, the service feels very different.
When Louise Casey reports, we know there’ll be a punch-up about who pays. How much should come from tax? How much should people pay themselves? How do we protect someone whose care bills mount up over years?
There’s another bill to put on the table. What does it cost to provide the care in the first place?
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Start with a wage that gives people a reason to stay.
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Make training part of the paid working week and
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Make sure extra skill, earns extra pay.
Then, give councils a funding settlement they can plan around.
If a provider is expected to improve pay and conditions, the fee the council pays has to cover them.
Two areas can have similar care needs and very different capacities to raise money locally. A national service will need central funding that reflects those differences.
Whitehall already takes local care needs and the strength of the council tax base into account.
The question for Casey is whether the money a council ends up with will buy the care people have been assessed as needing, at rates that allow providers to keep experienced staff.
A council can get a fair share of the national pot and still be unable to buy enough hours of home care.
… Casey will have to set out what it would cost to protect people from ruinous care bills and who would benefit. A cap of some sort, but...
... the council still needs enough money to buy the hours, and a provider still needs someone to work them, and...
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How long from agreeing the care to the first visit?
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How often does nobody turn up? And...
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When someone does, is it a face you know?
Councils and providers already collect some of the information...
... Casey should ask for all three figures to be published on the same basis across England, so people can see what the funding buys at the front door.
Those figures would tell us more about the care people actually receive than a falling vacancy rate on its own.
The report should arrive with a price and a timetable for a straightforward promise...
'If you’re assessed as needing help at home, a trained person will be available to turn up, there’s a decent chance it’ll be someone you know, and...'
... how much longer do we expect people to do it for an extra twelve pence?
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